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How does that saying go? “Give a man a chicken and feed him for a day. Show him how to get to the grocery store, and teach him to roast a chicken, and he can make, like, four good meals with it.” Or something like that.

Anyhow, when I was in college, my wise roommate Beth taught me how to roast a chicken and make it last. On Monday, we ate roast chicken. On Tuesday, we ate chicken, spinach, and rice casserole. On Wednesday, we had a light supper of chicken salad sandwiches. And the remains of the well-picked chicken made an excellent soup on Thursday. A good roasted chicken goes a long way.

We’ve rented a house at the beach this week, but we haven’t seen it because why would you leave your house if it had a pool like this in the backyard? Between this, and other things the only delight pathetic city people — the giant (charcoal!) grill, a washer and dryer and an entirely separate floor just for bedrooms, meaning that adults can converse at a notch above a whisper after children go to sleep — we have zero regrets. Plus, 7 week-olds, as everyone lies when they say, are so portable! I mean, they physically are, but our sardine-packed car on Friday with everything from a folding bassinet, crib, tub, reams of burp cloths, swaddling blankets and the most sigh-worthy collection of tiny rompers might tell a different story.

Beach house cooking — the kind fueled by good farmer’s markets but the notable absence of whatever ingredient you needed most, forcing you to be clever — is my favorite. To wit, it’s only day three and we’ve already eaten our body weights in grilled meat, caprese, and my favorite new hack on this avocado-cucumber salad (with ample lime juice, olive oil, sea salt and small amount of finely slivered jalapenos and red onion), and this six-ingredient corn salad I made last week is hopefully next for a repeat.

When it comes to lunch, sandwiches make a fine choice, but there’s really only so much you can put between two slices of bread. Swap that sandwich bread for a pita, however, and it’s a totally different ballgame. Sure, you could fill a pita with cold cuts as you would a sandwich, but your options go way beyond that.

From eggs and leafy greens to meat and whole-grain salads, make lunch more interesting with one of these 15 recipes that are perfect to stuff inside a pita.

Grilling used to be a very mysterious way of cooking to me, but over the past few years, I’ve slowly become more confident at the grill. I’ve even taken on larger projects, like using it as a rotisserie and deep-frying on it.

I also live in a building with a communal grill, and while it’s been fun to meet my neighbors and share grilling recipes, there’s one mistake I’ve observed many first-time or very-occasional grillers make.

“The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.” — Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume